Busywork and Projects.

Last week, I finished my Tilted Duster in Knitpicks Main Line yarn.
During the next three days of wearing it, I found out that Main Line sheds horribly -- so I borrowed my mom's washer and washed it.
It turned into a poofy, fuzzy mess, and I'm still caught somewhere between severe irritation (Superwash yarn, fer chrissakes!), depression (oh my God, how much work wasted?), and the vague hope that it's all still salvageable. ... I really, really want it to be salvagable, because I'm already well in love with that sweater.
And that's most of what I was doing on Saturday, killing the time in-between by taking apart my Kromski Prelude and sanding its parts.

After two years of going around with an unfinished spinning wheel, I'm finally going to put a protective coat on it. The surprising break in the rain's helped a lot with that: I forgot my two yard niddy-noddy at home for the sanding job, alas, but I can fix that this weekend. Dad's even offered up his workbench for the staining and such -- maybe if I'm really lucky, he'll even give me a hand. I'm opting to use some of his Oak stain, rather than go with mahogany or anything else that's similiar to the finishes available for Kromski wheels: After all, why imitate if I can customize?

I've been playing with a lot of handspindles in the mean time, and while I don't have a serious amount of yarn made yet, I do seem to have a small and steadily growing collection of lace- to fingering-weight singles mounting up. I'm still debating if I want to leave them as singles or ply them: I'm probably going to go with the latter, since I have this abysmal habit of overtwisting my yarn that I haven't yet figured out how to avoid, and plying seems to help keep the yarn from twisting around and around and again on itself, once I've set the twist.  -- It probably also helps that I have two new, lovely spindles, weighing in at .6 oz and 1.2 oz, respectively.

Both were Etsy finds: That site continues to be a huge temptation for me. Really, I just need to start selling some of my knitting up there, if only so I have money for all the pretty things I can possibly find there!

First, from Yorkieslave:

Tempus Fugit Spindle

I'm perhaps a little too amused by the fact that it's a crazy clock-face on the spindle's top: On the other hand, I'm apparently not the only one that thinks Lewis Carroll, since the seller sent along a mini-batt of yummy bamboo-merino fiber in a colorway she calls Alice.

And the other, from Butterfly Girl Designs:

Tigereye Stone Spindle

I have a weakness for Tiger's eye.